


running on to nowhere

by mythicbeast



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-21
Updated: 2011-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicbeast/pseuds/mythicbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gamzee and Nepeta deal with a feeling that isn't usually covered by the troll spectrum: guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on the Homestuck Kink Meme:
> 
> "All the dead trolls are alive again via various shenanigans and Gamzee's back on sopor slime. Thing is, he still remembers all the stuff he did when he was sober and feels terrible about it, so he goes and apologizes to all the trolls he killed, including Nepeta.
> 
> They all forgive him, eventually, but he still feels down. Nepeta notices, and offers to talk about his feeling some more in private, possibly in some sort of pile, leading to comfort sex."

They're all alive, given a broad working definition of what counts as alive and assuming it includes "walking around with a gaping hole in your stomach and glowing like a troll-shaped nightlight," and "having about as much emotion as a plank." But then, Aradia got away with that for all those sweeps without anyone noticing, so Sollux probably isn't going to have anything to worry about.

Nepeta's going to have to do a lot of work on her shipping wall, and she isn't sure how she's going to find glow-in-the-dark paint in the Veil. But she doesn't really mind: she's just happy to have her friends back.

Dying is hard to remember, and strictly speaking Nepeta isn't sure if she _did_. She remembers cutting across Gamzee's face, and the blood that welled up ( _he really is a highblood after all_ ) from flesh that parted under her claws with the barest resistance. Everything after that is a blur. Her next memory is Kanaya shaking her awake, her head filled with the bad kind of fuzz and stars exploding in her vision every time she opened her eyes.

Battered, but alive. Barely.

Gamzee, unlike the rest of them, doesn't wake up. By then they've taken to watching him in shifts, keeping a steady trickle of hastily-engineered sopor slime down his throat. To avoid, as Karkat succinctly puts it, "Another _gogdamn_ massacre." The paint on his face has been washed off, and the fresh weals that cut across his face are a flushed, angry indigo. He looks, despite being submerged neck-deep in sludgy fluid, oddly naked. Nepeta sits beside the makeshift recuperacoon dutifully, keeping her hands clenched in her lap.

It's too tempting to reach out and touch his face, otherwise.

The hours tick by. The other trolls have scattered among the corridors in small groups, too uneasy to stay in one room. Equius' towel supply is expended on cleaning up unpleasant reminders of recent deaths, but nothing will get rid of the smell of fear and blood that hangs in the air.

Nepeta is halfway to a catnap, fighting off sleep because Karkat seemed to think it was so _important_ to stay awake, when she realizes she isn't alone anymore. She lifts her head, slowly, to see half-lidded eyes staring back at her with a familiar glazed expression.

"Hi," Nepeta says, after a minute. There doesn't seem to be much else to say.

"Motherfucker," Gamzee enunciates, slowly, letting his head loll back against the edge of the tub as he shuts his eyes. "Feels like a rainbow drinker came up and slammed me one right in the fucking bone bulge."

And Nepeta, finally, remembers how to _laugh_.

...

No one is terribly pleased to see Gamzee, except maybe Tavros, but that's probably because Tavros is happy to see anyone. Equius flushes blue, but says nothing; Nepeta knows he'd ask for a towel, if they weren't all soaked in blood. Gamzee just stands there, dripping forlornly onto the floor.

It's embarrassingly quiet. Probably becase Kanaya has a hand firmly clamped over Eridan's mouth. Nepeta approves, and has to shake herself out of contemplations of possible moirallegianceships. There are more important matters at hand.

Eventually, Gamzee looks up.

"Figure I should fucking apologize for, you know, getting you guys all up murdered and shit." He rubs at his arm, like it still aches from the impact of hitting yielding flesh. "I'd say it's a fucking miracle we're all still here. You still my best friend and shit, right, bro?" He gives them the dopiest, _dampest_ smile Nepeta has ever seen, but the last is directed at Karkat. In front of everyone else.

Karkat stares, looking torn between spontaneous implosion and reverting to a wriggler out of sheer, incredible embarrassment on Gamzee's behalf. Instead, with a sharp hiss, he puts both hands over his face. "Yeah. Fine. We're still best friends. Now can you _please_ go and put some fucking clothes on?"

All in all, as troll apologies go, that actually went pretty well.

It doesn't occur to Nepeta until later that something still isn't quite right. Another, less romantically-inclined troll might have been tempted to dismiss it as indigestion, but she has a shipper's nose for emotional imbalance. Gamzee's drug-induced stupor doesn't quite have the same relaxed, easy-going air it did before. She catches him touching the scars on his face, dropping his hands when he notices her watching. Whenever anyone turns towards him to speak, he flinches like he expects to be hit.

Fed up, she corners him in one of the storage rooms. It isn't hard: she's had more trouble trying to get her lusus to take a bath. Gamzee's taller than her-- he could be even taller than Equius, if he didn't slouch so much-- but he looks distinctly tiny as she advance on him, eyes darting left and right for an exit that won't manifest.

"Hey, sister, what's this all about?" he grins at her, but without the paint on to distort his face, the expression isn't quite as convincing as it usually is.

Nepeta's answer is a tacklepounce that errs decidedly on the side of _tackle_ more than pounce, knocking Gamzee to the floor. "What is _wrong_ with you?!" she screeches, exasperated. It's a good thing she isn't wearing her claws, or he'd probably be a sad little pile of fleshy ribbons, the way she's flailing at him. Gamzee yelps, trying to dodge to no avail, which only exasperates her _more_.

Why does Gamzee always have to be so _difficult_? It's so much easier with Equius. She knows what _he_ feels like most of the time, but maybe it's just not that simple when the other person isn't your moirail. Her fingers dig into one of the arms Gamzee is using to shield his face, and pries it up and away. The intensely confused (as much as his half-drugged haze will let him be) expression would be cute, if she wasn't so annoyed.

There's something in his eyes that catches her, making her look at him, _really_ look at him. None of them get any sleep these days, but the bruises under Gamzee's eyes run darker than most. He doesn't even need the paint anymore: his face looks like a mask anyway, haunted and hollow.

She releases him, letting him thump back against the floor.

"We are," Nepeta informs him, darkly, "Going to need a Pile."

...

"How do you feel?" Nepeta asks, primly arranging herself so she's sitting back on her legs. Moving makes her foot slip and press on a horn with a painfully loud HONK. Wincing, she wishes there was a pile of something _else_ to talk about feelings on. It is very hard to have a serious conversation about feelings when every few seconds are punctuated by a sound like a hoofbeast with digestive problems.

Gamzee doesn't even seem to notice. He's sprawled onto the horn pile, all gangly limbs and tangled hair; with his eyes shut, he looks like he could be dead-- or like he could wake up to be the same monster that killed her moirail at any minute. He doesn't answer, and Nepeta crawls over to him on all fours, a series of honks trailing behind her.

"You'll feel better if you talk about your feelings, you know," she huffs, though she doesn't have much impatience in her voice now. She expects that now that Gamzee's in the Pile, the feelings jam ought to come naturally. That's the magical thing about lying in piles of stuff. Or, she supposes, Gamzee would call it the mOtHeRfUcKiN mIrAcLe of lying in piles of stuff. It's a pile significantly diminished since its original creation, since the other trolls have prudently removed the horns that had soaked in Feferi's blood. It's still better than the pile of robots, though. You can't have a feelings jam in a pile that you don't feel a connection to.

Connection or not, though, it isn't quite working. Nepeta leans over Gamzee's face, looking at his scars. If she reaches out her hand now, she can just put her fingers against--

"I think," Gamzee answers, abruptly, "I think I feel pretty fucking awful, actually."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Nepeta sits up, trying not to look too pleased. Finally, an emotional breakthrough! This is usually the point where Equius just talks and talks about his feelings and she just listens, so she hunkers down, waiting to hear what else Gamzee has to say.

What she _doesn't_ expect him to do is to roll over and drape onto her, pressing her to the pile ( _hoooooonk_ ). He's cold against her, colder than any blueblood ought to be. Nepeta's arms come up before she can even think about it, hands gripping the other troll's shoulders-- she could push him away now, if she wanted to. Not a single muscle in his body would offer resistance, since he's flopped over her like big dumb dead thing, except he's not even _soft_ , so it's just _ow_.

There's a low, persistent murmur against her neck, and Nepeta realizes that Gamzee is _talking_ , so fast and soft that she can barely make out one word from the next.

"--fucked up motherfucker. Fucked that shit right up there, man, should've seen that coming--"

"Um," Nepeta says, carefully, beause her moirail's emotional problems are usually of a more easily discerned source than whatever mess Gamzee has sitting under his horns. "It's okay." She gingerly pats him on the shoulder. After a moment, she slides her arms around his neck in a sort-of kind-of hug. She smells something sour in the air, stinging her nose, just about the same time as she feels something distinctly _damp_ start seeping against her shoulder.

This is awkward, and this is not what a feelings jam should be about at all. She swallows.

"I fucking killed you," Gamzee's voice is oddly muffled and flat. "I killed you, and I killed Equius, and even if I _didn't_ kill anyone else that sure didn't stop me from making a fucking crayon box out of their motherfucking dead asses." He says that without taking a breath, and Nepeta's throat hurts, though she isn't sure whether it's sympathy for his strained respiratory system or because he sounds so _fucking_ sad.

"It's okay," she repeats, fingers carding through the tangled mess of his hair. "We came back, didn't we? It's not going to happen again."

Gamzee laughs, and she shudders at how dark and bitter the sound of it is. "You don't fucking know that for sure, chica," he lifts his face away from her shoulder, pressing his forehead against hers instead. Inanely, Nepeta realizes it really _is_ impossible to see what someone else's face looks like when they're less than an inch from you-- though she can feel that Gamzee's cheeks are wet. His scars glisten in the dim light.

"--but _I_ do. I can still _hear_ the fucker on the other side, you know?" He sounds entranced, eyes half-shut and unfocused. "Telling me he's ready to come over a and have a motherfucking _party_ with you all, anytime. What am I gonna do if I forget he's there, huh?" His head presses against hers harder, until she wants to tell him it hurts. " _What am I gonna fucking do?_ "

"I don't _know,_ " Nepeta wails-- and she rolls them _both_ over, grabs Gamzee by the front of his shirt, and _kisses_ him.

She's never done this before. Nepeta realizes this half a second too late, when she's already pressed flush against the other troll and her fangs click painfully against his. Hopefully, Gamzee hasn't done this before either. His mouth is open, probably from shock, and she presses her advantage, mushing their faces together like they're a pair of electromagnetic plush cephalophods and licking against his mouth. He doesn't taste like sopor slime, like she was half-afraid he would. He just tastes like-- well, like _Gamzee._

At first, it doesn't seem like he's going to respond at all. Then a hand reaches up, fingers twining into her hair and brushing the base of a horn, and Gamzee pulls her down.

Nepeta knows, in theory, how filling a pail works: given a few sweeps, her pairing wall might have been updated to show off this knowledge. But today she is only six sweeps, and she has never done this before. The Veil isn't Alternia, and there isn't even a point to this, but she presses her mouth against Gamzee's anyway, stifling anything else he might have to say.

She always thought her first kiss would go to her matesprit.

For a moment, it's enough. Then Gamzee's thumb rubs against her horn in small, careful circles, and Nepeta has to bite Gamzee's lip so she doesn't _yowl_.

"Fuck!" Gamzee's head jerks back, but it doesn't _sound_ like that was a complaint-- if anything, it sounded suspiciously like a moan. His hand drops away from Nepeta's head, much to her disappointment, but it leaves him open for a sneak horn attack... which she immediately executes, chest rubbing against his as she clumsily slides up (why does he have to be so tall?) to grab his horns. Both of them.

Gamzee bucks so hard it nearly throws her off, but Nepeta does, after all, have experience with wild animals.

At some point, one of them has the sense to take off their clothes, leaving polka-dot pajamas and cat-pelt accesories strewn haphazardly across the floor. They slip and slide in the pile of horns, losing their balance and filling the air with demented honking until Gamzee finally says " _Fuck this._ " and sweeps Nepeta into his arms, stumbles over to the nearest crate, and drops her onto it. She laughs, because it's _ridiculous_ , the flush riding high in Gamzee's cheeks (and probably, by the way her face feels, her own) while he kicks away a horn that makes the mistake of squeaking underfoot. It feels tight and weird in her belly, like it's winding up for something she doesn't know what to call yet. She watches his face when he turns it towards her, something oddly searching in his gaze.

She doesn't know what he's looking for. Frankly, _he_ probably doesn't either. His fingers curl against her hip, like he isn't certain whether he wants to pull himself closer or push her away. It occurs to Nepeta that she has her legs wrapped around him, heels digging into his back, so he couldn't move away even if he wanted to. What does _she_ want?

She wants him to touch her. She wants him to go away. She doesn't know what she wants him to do, only that _anything_ is better than having him look at her like he's about to say incredibly stupid that she'll want to hit him for.

Gamzee shifts against her, lips sliding and wrapping around one of her horns, and it's while she's arching hard against him that Nepeta finally remembers what this emotion is called:

Pity.

Nepeta presses a hand to the midle of Gamzee's chest, pushing him away. He lets her, and she brushes his hair away from his face, watching his eyes slip shut. Feeling suddenly reckless, she traces her fingers over the scars she left there: one, two, three. She doesn't know if they were a lucky shot, or if it was a wound he _let_ her make, or proof of something that only makes sense to Gamzee.

Gamzee goes still under her touch. Nepeta feels something hot and strange bloom in her chest when she realizes his breath is short, coming in ragged, uneven stutters. He opens his eyes when she pulls her hand away, and she shivers. They are blown wide, dark with-- something. Something that almost definitely isn't wanting to kill her, though it might just be something close to it.

"What's the matter?" Nepeta finds herself laughing, feeling strangely breathless herself. "Cat got your tongue?"

When he sinks to his knees and proceeds to demonstrate _exactly_ where his tongue is, she forgets about laughing at all.

...

 

( _Honk._ )


	2. OUTTAKE/EPILOGUE

"You are now Gamzee's _what._ "

"I'm his auspistice!" Nepeta is terribly smug about that. Equius sputters.

"You cannot be his auspistice. For one thing, he does not even have a kismesis." Though Equius can readily admit Gamzee needs _some_ form of mediation, he can't exactly say he's keen on his moirail being put to the task. Just the thought of her having to deal with the highblood in his darker moods makes him sweat.

"It's easy," Nepeta answers, confidently. "I'll auspistice between him and himself! Just like Jade and Karkat!" She beams, terribly proud of herself for the discovery.

It's always about the shipping, with Nepeta. "Very well," he answers, at least grimly certain they won't live to regret this. "As long as-- as long as it makes you happy."

Equius really wishes he had a towel right now.


End file.
